The following column appeared in this week's edition of Connect Weekly:
There aren’t many observers, informed or otherwise, who would’ve predicted the kind of impact this year’s Oil Barons squad would see from an eighteen year old rookie forward hailing from a city in Colorado of less than 25 thousand people, just a few miles outside of Boulder.
But Adam Durkee made one of his biggest impacts this past weekend at the Casman Centre, scoring two key goals, stepping up in the absence of eight injured teammates, and helping propel this squad to a sweep of two south division opponents.
But his presence on this year’s team owes an awful lot to chance.
“To be honest, we were kind of done our recruiting,” recounted head coach Gord Thibodeau of the time he first spotted Durkee, at a showcase tournament in Las Vegas where his minor hockey team, the Rocky Mountain Roughriders, was playing.